’ Introduction : Mixed Analog and Digital Systems

Why mix at all? Generally, a design uses analog components for two reasons: to interface digital processing with applicationspecific environments and to accelerate processing in high-performance systems. Many applications include interactions among electronics and various sensors and actuators: such interactions imply analog signals. To further complicate the task of mixed-signal design, many of these applications require high quality and reliability since an individual’s safety may depend on them. Processing analog signals and images will be important to information delivery technologies in the 21st century. However, slow analog processing and transmission limit performance, and we need to develop mixed-signal